Caretakers for Meatball the celebrity bear in Alpine said Monday that they are starting to raise money to keep the popular animal indefinitely.

That would mean building a larger enclosure for the black bear, which was captured about two weeks ago in La Cañada Flintridge after months of being spotted in and around the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale. He gained an international following on Twitter and his antics became a topic of conversation in the area.

Meatball, aka Glen Bearian and The Glendale Bear, was trapped by state wildlife agents concerned about his forays into neighborhoods. They typically euthanize “habituated” bears but they said they didn’t do that with Meatball because of “public perception.”

Instead, they sent him to the licensed Lions, Tigers & Bears sanctuary in Alpine for what was initially expected to be short stay before he was taken to a sanctuary in Colorado. But last week, that option appeared to dry up when California wildlife officials said the sanctuary wasn’t authorized to import wild bears.

Jennifer Jenkins, a spokeswoman for Lions, Tigers & Bears, said Monday that the “Colorado deal is dead.”

“It would be in Meatball’s best interest to begin fundraising and move forward with efforts to build his habitat, as inaction would waste precious time,” she said.

So far, sanctuary officials have only said that the cost would be tens of thousands of dollars.

SDG&E has already offered to donate the 26-foot tall wooden poles to support the fencing needed to build the habitat enclosure.

Jenkins said Lions, Tigers & Bears founder Bobbi Brink is “working with contractors to find out exactly what would need to be done to build the new habitat, a timeline of construction and estimates.”